PATRICIA OSUNA
Madrid
Saturday, December 19, 2020 - 01:46
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Adventure.
The adventures of the young Spaniard who travels from Barcelona to Australia on foot
Discover.
Hell's gate exists and is in Turkmenistan
The lives of
Xiana Siccardi
(Barcelona, 1978) and
Lakpa Nuru
(Solukhumbu, 1996) crossed thanks to a mountain.
And not just any mountain:
Everest, the roof of the world.
The Nepalese Himalayas have witnessed this friendship that began in 2017 during a
trek
to Everest Base Camp and culminated in the publication of
Sherpas.
The other story of the Himalayas
(Ediciones del Viento), a book that collects almost three years of travel together as well as the
last Nuru expedition to Everest
in 2019, the year of the famous photo of the overcrowding at the top that turned the planet.
Nuru and Siccardi book cover.
Siccardi (journalist) and Nuru (
Sherpa
) set out to give a voice to the community to which the latter belongs.
“When I explained to my acquaintances that I was going to write with Xiana about the Sherpas, they told me that I was never going to get Westerners interested in
our history and culture.
Now my mother cannot believe that a book in which she
appears on the cover
is being sold in Europe and can help us financially, ”says Nuru.
"Sherpa culture relies heavily on
Tibetan Buddhism
and what remains of an ancient shamanic tradition called
bön
, different references to those we have in Europe," says Siccari.
“Lakpa and I had
all the possible differences:
he is a Buddhist, he was born in a stone house in the Himalayas and had to start working as a
porter at the age of 14
to help his family.
But we chatted for days, walking on snow or in the rain, at an altitude of five thousand meters or in the jungle, about our way of seeing life, society, family, religion, freedom, traditions and love. .
I proposed to him to write a book about all this, with four hands ».
And it has been a great success.
In just six months the first edition has been sold out and the second is on sale now.
Nuru has reached
the top of Everest
up to
three times
(the first, with 19 years).
I never thought I could reach the highest peak in the world.
You get to the summit of Everest very tired after walking many hours, but the views from
the highest mountain in the world
are wonderful, "he says.
Nuru in Camp 4 of Everest (Nepal).
Of course, everything has its counterpart: “Western mountaineers use to hire Sherpas to achieve their successes, but hardly anyone talks about the
value of Sherpas
.
Without us it is not possible to reach the summit.
We do not feel respected or valued, it is unfair.
Siccardi is blunt in this regard.
"Everyone is free to travel as they want, but we must think carefully about
how we treat the local population
, as there is a temptation to consider tourism employees from developing countries as servants."
For Nuru, for example, the last ascent
almost cost her her life
because she did not carry supplemental oxygen, at the request of her client.
In the case of Siccardi, it has only reached 5,400 meters of altitude «but here the effects of low temperatures and the first symptoms of hypoxia (altitude sickness) are beginning to be noticed, so let's imagine what it is like to be in the area of death, beyond 7,500 meters, where
hallucinations
are reported
.
Some people take off their clothes because they feel like they are dying of heat at temperatures of -20ºC.
Sherpas photograph or videotape their clients at the top because some do
not even remember arriving,
”says the woman from Barcelona.
QUESTION OF HEIGHT
Regarding the
official size
of the highest mountain in the world, set a week ago by
Nepal and China at 8,848.86 meters,
Nuru maintains that “it is not something that important.
It has been measured many times and it is always
the same mountain.
The important thing is how to minimize traffic jams on the way to the summit, how to reduce
accidental deaths
or freezes, and how to keep the
mountain clean
.
The Barcelona woman has donated her share of
Sherpas
profits in full
to Lakpa and her community “so that they can better cope with this difficult year.
We also collaborate in the
removal of a ton of waste
from the Everest region.
Siccardi and Nuru on the Lakpa family's farmland in Khari Khola.
In this sense, Siccardi adds: “The Himalayas of future generations are being defined in this.
Fortunately, the money Nepalese get
from mountain tourism
allows for incredible things, like young Sherpas entering
Kathmandu
for
higher education
for the first time
.
Far from being satisfied, Siccardi and Nuru have other projects underway.
One of them is a
trip in April 2021
to the locations of the book through the Historical Society of Travel and Expeditions to live with Sherpas and in which both authors will be present.
«The Himalayas is not what you see, it is
how it happens inside you.
I don't know anyone who has been there and hasn't thought of going back.
There are those who stay hooked and come back again and again.
It has an
overwhelming magnetism
that never appears in photos, ”concludes Siccardi.
Objective: clean Everest of trash
Xiana Siccardi and Lakpa Nuru, together with the Coruña publishing house Ediciones del Viento, have paid with their copyrights for the removal and recycling of a ton of garbage present in one of the most popular expedition and
trekking
routes in
the Nepalese Himalayas.
Action carried out in collaboration with the local organization
Sagarmatha Pollution Center Committee (SPCC).
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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